Tag: books

The Poetry Show is about poems for everyone: it’s not that stuff you learned in school. This week, we talk with Becca about Larp: Live Action Role Play, which is, as Becca describes it, “a cross between Re-enactment, Fan Fiction, and camping.” Or…. something like that. Sometimes I just make stuff up. Becs said at least PART of that.

Anyway, when daughter Emily and I go to Anime conventions, I always go as Sally: I am forever putting myself back together after fate, and sometimes nasty people, rip me to shreds. Em goes as her OC du jour: Dead Marco, a motorcycle transformer, a fire-breathing Little Pony, or AU Frisk. What do OC and AU mean? Tune in and find out!

Stairwell Books Presents: Susie Williamson and RETURN OF THE MANTRA
After we learn all sorts of nerd lingo, it’s off to the AU created by Holmsfirth native Susie Williamson: a hot, drought-plagued land where the wild animals are gone, the men dig for crystals, it’s a hyper-capitalist society based on religion, and everyone worships a haughty, selfish just-won’t-die King. No, not Trump. Kinda close though.

Susie launches her sci-fi/fantasy novel RETURN OF THE MANTRA in Exeter later this week and in Holmsfirth in early June! We’ll discuss world building, investigating real life through speculative fiction, and human-made environmental disaster. Join us for role playing and alternative universes both on The Poetry Show and in Stairwell Books Presents.

We start March with the #WorldBookDayUK,
Two Rivers Radio team prepared a small list of books that are definitely worth reading!

1. First from Compost John of Compost John’s Recycled Radio Show:The Oracle of Oil: A maverick geologist’s quest for a sustainable future
by Mason Inman

“Fantastic biography about M. King Hubbert, who first noticed patterns in oilfield exploration, discovery, extraction and peak production. He predicted peak oil in the USA as 1970, back in 1956, and was widely ridiculed. He got the prediction absolutely right (until 2017 when oil production rose above the 1970 peak!). His prediction for global peak oil production was a bit more ‘fuzzy’, and has been complicated by the emergence of ‘tight oil’ production, so, fracking of shale, and tar sands, but he’s still a much admired character who was passionate about many things other than his geologist training.”

575 AD: A baby is washed up on the Irish coast and is taken to the nearest abbey. He grows up to become a scholar and a monk, but, in early adulthood, he appears to have become possessed, scribbling endless strange verses in Latin. When the Abbott tries to have him drowned, he disappears. Later, his scribblings turn up as the Book of Bran, his writings translated as portents of the future. Violence and untimely death befall all who come into the orbit of this mysterious book .

3. And also from RoseElmet
by Fiona Mozley

“It really is worth the hype.”

Atmospheric and unsettling,Elmet is a lyrical commentary on contemporary society and one family’s precarious place in it, as well as an exploration of how deep the bond between father and child can go.

“Pretty scary but also pretty cool- really clever as well, your own imagination makes up the ‘thing’!”

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he’s offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it.

Our departure from the European Union is filled with propaganda, myth and and half truth – but the risks are very real. Mishandling Brexit could lower our global status, diminish our quality of life, and throw our legal system into turmoil. This is the first full public exploration of Brexit, shorn of the wishful thinking of its supporters in Parliament and the media.

6. And from YorkMan of @catchafire:The Gate to Women’s Countryby Sheri S. Teppe

“Set in a post-holocaust feminist dystopia that offers only two political alternatives: a repressive polygamist sect that is slowly self-destructing through inbreeding and the matriarchal dictatorship called Women’s Country. Here, in a desperate effort to prevent another world war, the women have segregated most men into closed military garrisons and have taken on themselves every other function of
government, industry, agriculture, science and learning.”

“Spectacular read, very humble and seemingly accurate account of many of the problems with a patriarchal society and how feminism and equality would (surprise surprise) make the world a better place for all.”

8. and another one from Adam :If on a Winters Night a Traveller
by Italo Calvino

“Simply brilliant, would need a lot more room to properly explain how and why, the main character is you, the reader, and it is just mind blowing literature. “

9. And one from Me 😉The Secret Life of Cows
by Rosamund Young

Charming, hilarious book following a family of cows and their mischief. It makes an interesting point that we should not judging animals intelligence in relation to our own.